When
the Society
for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was
set up in 1783 it had an exclusively male organization. Some of the
leaders of the anti-slavery movement such as William
Wilberforce were totally opposed to women being involved in the
campaign. One of Wilberforce's concerns was that women wanted to go
further than the abolition of the slave trade. Early women activists
such as Anne Knight and Elizabeth
Heyrick were in favour of the immediate abolition of slavery,
whereas Wilberforce believed that the movement
should concentrate on bringing an end to the slave trade.
Although women were excluded from the leadership of the Society
for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, records show that about
ten per cent of the financial supporters of the organisation were
women. In some areas, such as Manchester,
women made up over a quarter of all subscribers.
After the passing of the Abolition of the
Slave Trade Act in 1807, new organisations were formed to campaign
against slavery. The most important of these was the Anti-Slavery
Society founded in 1823. Members included Thomas
Clarkson, Henry Brougham, William
Wilberforce and Thomas Fowell Buxton.
Although women were allowed to be members they were virtually excluded
from its leadership.
On 8th April, 1825, a meeting took place at the home of Lucy Townsend
in Birmingham to discuss the issue
of the role of women in the anti-slavery movement. Townsend, Elizabeth
Heyrick, Mary Lloyd, Sarah Wedgwood,
Sophia Sturge and the other women at the meeting decided to form the
Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves (later the
group changed its name to the Female Society for Birmingham).
The formation of other independent women's groups soon followed. This
included groups in Nottingham (Ann
Taylor Gilbert), Sheffield (Mary
Ann Rawson, Mary Roberts), Leicester
(Elizabeth Heyrick, Susanna Watts), Glasgow
(Jane Smeal), Norwich
(Amelia Alderson Opie, Anna Gurney), London
(Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Mary Foster), Darlington (Elizabeth
Pease) and Chelmsford (Anne Knight).
By 1831 there were seventy-three of these women's organisations campaigning
against slavery.
Wilberforce's fear that women would advocate a more radical strategy
proved to be correct. In 1824 Elizabeth Heyrick
published her pamphlet Immediate not Gradual
Abolition. In her pamphlet Heyrick argued passionately
in favour of the immediate emancipation of the slaves in the British
colonies. This differed from the official policy of the Anti-Slavery
Society that believed in gradual abolition. The leadership of
the organisation attempted to suppress information about the existence
of this pamphlet and William Wilberforce
gave out instructions for leaders of the movement not to speak at
women's anti-slavery societies.
The Female Society for Birmingham had established
a network of women's anti-slavery groups and Heyrick's pamphlet was
distributed and discussed at meetings all over the country. In 1827
the Sheffield Female Society, became the first anti-slavery society
in Britain to call for the immediate emancipation of slaves. Other
women's groups quickly followed but attempts to persuade the leadership
of the Anti-Slavery Society initially
failed.
In 1830, the Female Society for Birmingham submitted a resolution
to the National Conference of the Anti-Slavery
Society calling for the organisation to campaign for an immediate
end to slavery in the British colonies. In an attempt to persuade
the male leadership to change its mind on this issue, the society
threatened to withdraw its funding of the organisation. The Female
Society for Birmingham was one of the largest local society donors
to central funds, and also had great influence over the network of
ladies associations which supplied over a fifth of all donations.
At the conference in May 1830, the Anti-Slavery
Society agreed to drop the words "gradual abolition"
from its title. It also agreed to support Sarah Wedgwood's plan for
a new campaign to bring about immediate abolition. The following year
the Anti-Slavery Society presented a petition to Parliament calling
for the "immediate freeing of newborn children of slaves".
The women's anti-slavery societies were disbanded after the Abolition
of Slavery Act was passed in 1833. However, several of the women
that had obtained experience in these societies now turned their attention
to other issues including factory reform,
the end of the Corn Laws and the campaign
for parliamentary reform. For example,
Anne Knight, Elizabeth
Pease and Jane Smeal were all active
in Moral Force Chartism movement.
In 1840 attempts were made to stop women delegates from taking part
in the World Anti-Slavery
Convention held in London in
1840. This inspired Anne Knight to start
a campaign advocating equal rights for women. This included having
gummed labels printed with feminist quotations that she attached to
the outside of her letters. In 1847 she published what is believed
to be the first ever leaflet on women's suffrage.
Two American delegates Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Lucretia Mott, like the British women
at the World Anti-Slavery
Convention, were refused permission to speak at the meeting.
Stanton later recalled: "We resolved to hold a convention as
soon as we returned home, and form a society to advocate the rights
of women." However, it was not until 1848 that Stanton and Mott
organised the Women's
Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. Stanton's resolution
that it was "the duty of the women of this country to secure
to themselves the sacred right to the elective franchise" was
passed and became the focus of the group's campaign over the next
few years.
(1)
In a letter written in January, 1826, William
Wilberforce criticised women's involvement in the Anti-Slavery
Society.
For
ladies to meet, to publish, to go from house to house stirring up
petitions - these appear to me proceedings unsuited to the female
character as delineated in Scripture. I fear its tendency would
be to mix them in all the multiform warfare of political life.
(2)
Elizabeth
Heyrick, Immediate, not Gradual Emancipation (1824)
Away
then with the puerile cant about gradual emancipation. Let the galling
ignominious chains of slavery be struck off, at once, from these
abused and suffering, these patient, magnanimous creatures.
The restoration of the poor Negroes' liberty must be the beginning
of our colonial reform, the first act of justice, the pledge of
our sincerity. It is the only solid foundation on which the reformation
of the slave, and the still more needful reformation of his usurping
master, can be built.
(3)
Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery Society, Appeal of the Friends
of the Negro to the British People (1827)
Slavery is not exclusively a political, but pre-eminently a moral
question; one, therefore, on which the humble-minded reader of the
Bible, which enriches his cottage shelf, is immeasurably, a better
politician than the statesman versed in the intrigues of Cabinets.
We ought to obey God rather than man.
(4)
In 1840 Benjamin Robert Haydon began painting a group portrait of
the World Anti-Slavery Convention that had taken place that year.
Anne Knight wrote to Lucy Townsend complaining
that most of the leading women involved in the campaign against
the slave trade were not going to be included in the picture.
I am very anxious that the historical picture now in the hand of
Haydon should not be performed without the chief lady of the history
being there in justice to history and posterity the person who established
(women's anti-slavery groups). You have as much right to be there
as Thomas Clarkson himself, nay perhaps more, his achievement was
in the slave trade; thine was slavery itself the pervading movement.
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